Monday marked the sixty-seventh anniversary of the founding of Turkey’s Democratic Party. The DP became the country’s first opposition party to rise to power and end the era of one-party rule. Founded on January 7, 1946, the DP gained political traction following Turkish president Ismet Inonu’s decision in 1945 to open up the country’s political system. While some members of the ruling Republican People’s Party (CHP) wanted to suppress the DP, Inonu decided that a multiparty system would allow for a possible change in government and decided to abandon the title of “National Unchangeable Leader.” In the 1950 election, the DP won 54 percent of the vote and 396 out of 487 parliamentary seats, sweeping Ataturk’s CHP from power for the first time. The ten years of subsequent Democrat rule was marked by political instability, culminating in the imposition of martial law and a 1960 military coup that imprisoned the Democrat party leaders.

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